The Politics of Geopolitics: Italy’s Engagement in the Sahel and the Geopolitical Imaginary of the Wider Mediterranean

Abstract

Over the past decade, Italy has considerably expanded its engagement in the Sahel region, by opening new embassies, increasing aid and participating in multi-lateral and bi-lateral military operations. The revitalisation of Italy’s commitment in the Sahel is framed as part of Rome’s projection in the ‘Wider Mediterranean’. Drawing on the lenses of critical geopolitics, the article investigates the geopolitical imaginary underpinning this framing, and its puzzling stretch to the landlocked Sahel region. We situate the notion of Wider Mediterranean on the background of Italy’s geopolitics tradition and foreign policy posture, and decrypt its contextualised meanings. We explore the hypothesis that the Wider Mediterranean does not entail a unitary worldview and strategy; rather, it amounts to a broad signifier which different actors tie to different geographic areas and security priorities, thereby paving the way to a cacophony of actions with sometimes contradictory outcomes. Deconstructing Italy’s geopolitical imaginary thus questions the punctualization of the state assumed by much critical geopolitics literature. Illustrating this, we show how Italy’s engagement with Mali, through the crafting of the Rome Declaration, highlights the challenges of reconciling Italy’s foreign policy, domestic security and strategic objectives in the Wider Mediterranean.